Breaking Down X-Men '97 Episode "Bright Eyes" with Co-Writer JB Ballard!
JB Ballard shares his experience writing Rogue's revenge and shares some Easter eggs hidden in the episode.
In honor of the season finale of Disney+’s X-Men ‘97, I sat down with “Bright Eyes” episode co-writer and one of my good friends, JB Ballard, to celebrate his first TV writing credit!
A writer’s assistant from the beginning of the X-Men ‘97 season one writer’s room of “literally two writers”, JB contributed to the powerful Rogue storyline, “The other writer on the episode, Charley Feldman, requested that I co-write the episode with them, which is really nice. They knew that I had experienced grief and loss just like Rogue has, so that was my half of the episode, so to speak.”
Knowing that “Bright Eyes” was following up to the attack and destruction on Genosha, JB said it was exciting to be assigned the episode, but shared, “I was also really scared about it. It was gonna be the the sequel to the devastating moments beforehand [in ’Remember It’], so we had a lot to work with.”
“Bright Eyes” is the penultimate episode before the final three-episode arc of the season, so there was a lot of housekeeping to do in 22 minutes. “It was a double whammy of okay, here's Rogue in her revenge story, but also we're introducing the big bad of the season, Bastion, voiced by the incredible Theo James.” Previously, James voiced Vesemir in Netflix’s The Witcher: Nightmare of the World, penned by former X-Men ‘97 showrunner Beau DeMayo.
Goin’ Rogue
One of the biggest moments in the episode is what JB calls “Rogue on Fire.” In her grief over Gambit’s death, she hunts down Bolivar Trask, the man who helped re-create the Sentinels for OZT (later revealed by Bastion as Operation: Zero Tolerance). The X-Men find him on the top of a building, referencing Oppenheimer and monologuing about him becoming Death (not the comic version though, we’re still waiting on Gambit for that).
About to jump, Rogue grabs Trask by the collar and asks for more info, to which Trask responds, “I have nothing.” Cutting to a dramatic shot of Rogue’s lips, she says, “Same, sugar,” and drops Trask off the top of the building while the rest of her team members look on in horror. JB explains explicitly pushing Rogue out of the gray zone, “We kind of allude in the fifth episode that she's done bad things on Mystique's behalf, but we've never established, at least in canon, that she's a murderer.” Until now. At least, until he’s activated into a Prime Sentinel.
Getting at the root of what drove Rogue to well… go rogue, JB points to a number of factors. Among the many scenes that had to be cut for time, JB describes a scene of Rogue processing Gyrich’s anti-mutant sentiments after absorbing his memories for intel. “We had a little bit of a sequence that followed it where she's overwhelmed by it and blacks outs in the alley where Nightcrawler eventually finds her.” By the time her team finds her, she has completely processed and experienced that hate. “When she makes a decision with Trask, that is fully her decision.”
“But the second part of it for her is that, in Rogue’s mind, he was already going to jump. She's not killing him… she's letting him do the thing that he was about to do anyway.” JB wryly continues, “People are probably aware of this, but you have several members of that team that could have saved Trask. I don't think we have a number on how many stories [the building] is but there’s definitely enough time for Nightcrawler to *BAMF* down or for Jean to get him. The X-Men were just in shock.”
Easter Eggs
Of course, I had to ask if there were any personal Easter Eggs JB got into the episode.
The one Easter egg JB’s most proud of? Naming the DaCosta butler, Ford, as a reference to Sawyer from Lost, whose full name is James Ford. When Roberto visits his mom, he greets Ford by calling him Jimbo. “I'm a big Lost fan. How could I not get a Lost reference into an episode?”
JB also gets a shoutout in the episode himself. “One of the people on the design team snuck in an Easter egg. The base that Rogue attacks in the first act is named Fort Ballard. Which I did not ask them to do! I was in a review of the episode when I saw it and I was like ‘Who did that?’” Surprisingly, it’s not JB’s first mention in the MCU.
Working on Disney+’s Moon Knight, the museum security guard in the first episode named after him! Bonus fact, the name that he calls Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), “Scotty”, is the name of JB’s brother!
Morph
And quickly, JB addresses the discourse on what characters Morph should be able to transform into, “We had a lot of discussions about that in the writer's room. We had a long document of all the characters Morph can turn into, thinking about the pros and cons, when it would make sense.”
He says that some suggestions were “too ridiculous”, but also shares that more objectively, characters were also disqualified if that character didn't exist in the comics in 1997. “We've made some exceptions to that,” He admits, “But generally, we try to avoid breaking canon as far as the comic world goes.”
Avengers 🤝 Carol Danvers 🤝 Rogue 🤝 X-Men
JB grew up an Eagle Scout and had a lot of fun writing the exchange between America’s Boy Scout, Captain America, and Rogue. JB references that the original series showed Cap and Wolverine’s wartime friendship in World War II, so it was appealing to show “America’s top cop” interacting with another mutant rough around the edges, explaining that this is not Steve and Rogue’s first time meeting. “I just love Captain America, and the idea of Rogue and him being at equal strength levels, but she can chuck the shield and he can’t fly, so that’s how that works,” he trails off, laughing much like we all did when Rogue yeeted Cap’s shield.
JB also points out a specific Avengers comic book reference with Captain America’s motorcycle vanity plate. His license plate reads “AVN A10.” This is a reference to the Avengers Annual #10 from 1981, written by Chris Claremont, wherein the X-Men meet Carol Danvers, who is found without identification. It’s also an indirect tie to the original animated series.
In the Avengers comic book, Carol is a “Jane Doe”, rescued by Spider-Woman, a.k.a. Jessica Drew. Jessica contacts Professor Xavier for telepathic assistance to figure out what happened to Carol. Meanwhile, the Avengers face off against the Brotherhood of Mutants (of which Rogue is a member at this time). After defeating the Brotherhood, they find Carol recovering at the X Mansion, but she refuses to rejoin the Avengers after a seriously problematic pregnancy to which the Avengers respond problematically as well (the ‘80s!).
The Rogue/Carol storyline is eventually played out in Marvel Super-Heroes (Vol. 2) #11, and is also seen in X-Men: The Animated Series, we meet Carol as a “Jane Doe” in a coma, Rogue’s unfortunate victim from when she was in the Brotherhood of Mutants.
Thanks for reading!
xx Francesca